Reservations 972-437-1519

Voted one of the top 10  restaurants in DFW Metroplex By Dallas Morning News/ Guide Live Click on the link below to read complete Article http://www.guidelive. com/sharedcontent/dws/pt/slideshows/2007/12/2007top10restaurants/ Dallas Morning news/Guide Live Review Restaurant Info OVERALL     AVERAGE MEAL PRICE  $$($10 to $25) Average complete dinner per person, including appetizer, entree and dessert. CROSS STREETS Greenville Avenue HOURS Lunch: Mon-Fri 11 am-2:30 pm, Sat-Sun noon-3 pm Dinner: Sun-Thu 5-9:30 pm, Fri-Sat 5:30-10 pm PAYMENT INFO All Major Credit Cards SPECIAL FEATURES B.Y.O.B. By BILL ADDISON / Restaurant Critic When chef Vijay Sadhu moved to Dallas five months ago, he started informally polling acquaintances, asking what they thought was lacking in the area's Indian restaurants. His question elicited a swift, unanimous response: "Everywhere we go, they serve the same dishes. Please, give us something different." Mr. Sadhu percolated on this feedback when he opened Bukhara Grille in a space recently vacated by the local Ali Baba chain. He scattered some less common specialties throughout his menu, many hailing from the Hyderabadi culinary tradition of India's Andhra Pradesh state, but he hedged his bets, too: Old saws like chicken tikka masala and lamb kebab also made the final cut. The restaurant is surrounded by low-rise office buildings, and the curse of its nebulous location soon became clear: A crowd descended immediately and steadily for lunch, but at night the customer base vanished into the mists of residential suburbia. How to beckon them for dinner? Mr. Sadhu remembered the pleas for variety, and he decided to organize a weekend feast featuring the Hyderabadi specialties he'd learned to cook during his culinary training in India. He put the word out and posted the special menu on the restaurant's Web site. Customers arrived all right – in droves. The two-day event proved so successful that Mr. Sadhu and his partners, Sanjay Desai and Sunny Chetan, decided to repeat the feast the next weekend. That was when a colleague and I dropped in to check out the festivities. We swung open Bukhara's door, stepped into the crowded space, stopped cold and heaved sighs. A long line coiled around the back of the restaurant. Oh, man. A buffet? Our spirits drooped even further when we made it to the steam table: Pans and vats of brown and bland- looking food stretched nearly the length of the restaurant, a sepia-toned portrait of seeming disappointment. I went color-blind with happiness after the first bite. It was a dish called haleem, a thick porridge of ground lamb and lentils that migrated to India by way of Muslim Iran. I'd never tasted anything quite like its savory softness, a shade firmer than mashed potatoes but with unmistakably meaty warmth and a far-off echo of garlic and ginger. A dozen other preparations titillated with the same kaleidoscopic sense of spicing: Gravy flickering with chile heat enveloped soft-boiled eggs. Tiny eggplants wallowed in an earthy yet distantly tropical sauce of coconut and sesame. Garam masala, the spiky-sweet blend of spices, nipped playfully at the taste buds as we slurped nahari, a curried stew made with chicken and lamb. Gulab jamin and a cardamom-scented bread pudding for dessert didn't make the same impact, but neither did they diminish the tingle of discovery. Well, a discovery for me: Gazing at the Indian faces in the crowd, I saw a quiet satiety in their eyes that told me this food meant home. Mr. Chetan, who runs the front of the house, stood by the door as customers left, thanking them and handing out to-go copies of the a la carte menu. If these feastgoers do return for a sit-down meal, as I did, they'll find plenty more reason for celebrating. Even many of the standard offerings have been crafted with a distinguishing touch. In most Indian restaurants, korma is a vehicle for serving chunks of meat in sloppy, gluey cream sauce. But at Bukhara, new dimensions of the korma's gentle spices blossom after every mouthful, and the sauce has a faint and pleasant texture from ground almonds. Nafeez palak, a variation on the spinach-based saag paneer, receives the same nuanced treatment: The pronounced hit of cumin keeps the puréed dish from sliding into baby food territory. But don't settle for too much creamy comfort: An appetizer called haryali tikka includes rustic lumps of moist chicken coated in mint and cilantro chutney. For contrast, order shammi kebab, a misleading name for lamb and lentils ground together and fried into discs. Cardamom gives the dark flavor of the combined meat and legume an evanescent shimmer. And no matter what you order as an entree, request ustad ki dum biryani as an accompaniment. Marinated lamb and basmati rice are cooked in a small pot that has been sealed with an overlay of naan dough. Crack open the dough, and a cloud of steam perfumes the air like some memory-tugging incense. Each fluffy grain emerges distinct, and the lamb even creates a thin saffron- scented sauce to be stirred into the rice. The dish marries particularly well to a mixed platter of juicy meats from the tandoor oven. At his weekend feasts, Mr. Sadhu cooks huge cauldrons of ustad ki dum biryani. And now that he's snagged the Indian community's attention, he's brainstorming more such festivals that coincide with different Indian holidays or that explore Lucknowi cuisine, the royal foods of the maharajahs. Hopefully, some of these rarefied beauties will soon make their way to Bukhara's permanent menu. I for one would be mighty pleased to include more haleem in my diet. Food – 3 Service – 3 Atmosphere –2 Dallas Obsever Review: Bukhara Grille We venture into Indian territory By Mark Stuertz   Published: December 20, 2007 You don't get the pinks or the sheers, the lavish brasses or the visages of Shiva. You don't get the busy pungent fogs of a hundred spices ground and goaded to cloak the hearty smells of protein buried deep within: lentils and lamb, shrimp and chicken. At night the Bukhara Grille kitchen, partially open, is buried deep in darkness and shadow, a faint black light glows from somewhere, silhouetting plate stacks and figures that move silently but earnestly. It's hard to know how much work goes on in the barely visible, and how much more goes in the invisible, behind the swinging doors aft. But what comes out... Indian food—mostly—doesn't work over the great North Texas metro prairie. Things are mushy, gluey, indistinct, overcooked and desiccated; the flaws are shrouded in spices and herbs, much as our forbearers beat back their bathing-phobic scents with the craft of French perfumeries. Juices are eradicated from meat; resiliency is leached from vegetable. Everything that goes into the tandoor oven is forged and transmogrified into burlap. Search your memory. Can you find a piece of orange chicken from a Dallas tandoor oven that didn't convince you it would make a fine piece of rope in the hands of a skilled braider? At Bukhara there was a drumstick, a moist limb from which bled a whole ragtag quilt of spice and acrid fume that hid nothing. Juices sweated clear. Yes, Bukhara has a buffet at lunch. All Indian restaurants have a buffet at lunch, virtually. Yet Bukhara is different. Bukhara bills itself as a home of the 400-year-old forgotten frontier cuisines of northwest and southwest India: Lucknow, the capital city of landlocked Uttar Pradesh in northwest India, the country's most populous state; and Hyderabad, the capital city of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh that hugs the Indian Ocean further south. Hyderabadi food, a blend of spicy Indian and Persian cuisines, derives its salience from rice, tamarind, coconut and chilies. Lucknow is known for its breads and kebabs fashioned with sweet spices such as saffron, clove, nutmeg and fennel. "If I just did those two in Dallas, I could not survive," says owner Vijay Sadhu. "I've got to have curries." Or things that behave like curries. Baluchi jeenga is grilled shrimp—the scorched shells unleash tastes of smoke here and there—in a thick, sonorous sauce composed from pulped tamarind, shrimp stock, onions and freshly roasted cumin. The sauce is lithely rich, as if it were a coconut milk or light cream derivation. Sensations cycle in a near endless succession: perfume, heat, salt, tang jolted by still more perfume. Black lentils are cooked in a clay pot for 12 hours from the radiant heat of the tandoor oven and served in a slurry of butter, cream, ginger and garlic plus still more cumin. Hearty and richly scented, these lentils attack with a strain of heat that gently scours the back of the throat. With this hybrid Sadhu combines the kebabs and naans (round flat breads) of Bukhara, Uzbekistan, a node along the Silk Road. He nurtures these cuisines not only because he is familiar with them, but because he sees a niche he can gouge out of the area's crop of mostly mediocre Indian kitchens. How many places don't serve tandoor chicken that is dry and frayed? The culprit is preparation. Sadhu says most Indian restaurants precook their meats before they're finished in the tandoor oven. Bukhara cooks to order, marinating his meats in cream instead of yogurt to further enhance succulence. A trained chef from Hyderabad, Sadhu has worked Indian kitchens in New York and San Francisco. He operated his own Indian restaurant—Saffron—in Milwaukee, capturing a 2004 Best Indian Restaurant award from Bon Appetit magazine. Thus, he must be persnickety about spices. Sadhu buys only fresh, whole spices and roasts and grinds and blends them in-house. It shows in how his dishes unfurl. Samosas, turnovers stuffed with potato and green peas, are especially good: crisp, flaky and greaseless with a filling of distinct elements instead of an indistinguishable starchy mash you'd swear grows peach fuzz. Sadhu blends rice flour with wheat and adds crushed pomegranate seeds to make for crispy pastry that flakes. Bukhara dwells in a mothballed Ali Baba restaurant in a Richardson strip mall. Its design elements speak of budget stresses. Textured walls are washed in reds and oranges and yellows fixed with paintings of garlic cloves and lemon and cucumber slices plus framed depictions of kebabs. Banquettes are blue vinyl. Above the open kitchen, lighted alcoves paved with smooth stones hold exotic vases—one alcove gone dark. Instead of sitars and microtonal vocal waverings, the sound system knocks out alt rock. But the beat is useless. Service is slow and inattentive. You must prompt and prod, sometimes through vigorous flailing, for drinks—such as the spectacularly rich and smooth mango lassi—and entrees and dinner checks. But the greeting is fine. It begins with papadam (thin cracker flatbread) served with metal dishes of mint and sweet-sour tamarind sauce along with a salad composed of carrot planks soaked in lemon and ground mustard and leathery green chilies defanged in ice water laced with salt and turmeric. Ice water is poured in metal cups sleeved in pounded copper and somehow tastes as silty as catfish. Tandoor naan, the Indian flatbread baked in a tandoor oven, can be moist and fluffy or scorched and brittle. But whatever the texture, it's fantastic to drag through the rich slurries soaking the grilled shrimp or the lentils or especially the nafeez palak (Bukhara's version of sag paneer), a dish of warm pulverized spinach spiced with cumin and garlic swamping spongy cubes of house-made cheese. Mint salmon tikka, meticulous cubes of fish as dark as heavily tarnished bronze, is mush, fraying into soggy shreds instead of breaking away in rich, distinct flakes. Lamb kebabs, juicy chunks of raciness, are slathered in a spice blend so complex and gently potent that it jams your sense of culinary discernment. Bronzed buttons of ground lamb and lentil—four of them, on a bed of shredded cabbage and carrot interspersed with shards of green bell pepper—are brittle crisp and break open to expose spongy cores of steaming fume. Stepping down from this sensual fusillade can be daunting. Do so with mango lassi or rasmalai, house- made cheese patties soaked in saffron cream. Sadhu plans more Bukharas for the Park Cites and Plano, which could sink coffin nails in Dallas' traditional Indian travesty. For good. Bukhara Grille, 955 E. Campbell Road, Richardson,972-437-1519. Open 11 a.m.-2:30 p.m., noon-3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday;5 p.m.-9:30 p.m. Sunday-Thursday; and 5 p.m.-10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. $$ More Reviews http://www.chowhound.com/topics/437444